Dream Man
by ChelleyPamWriter
Summary: Rey had thought her inspiration was just a figment of her imagination, until he no longer was.
1. Chapter 1

Proof that there was life on other planets arrived in the form of ships coming into orbit above the planet.

As predicted by movies and books for decades, everyone lost their shit.

The various religions vacillated between screaming that it was the Rapture to screaming that it was the work of whatever they named their Devil.

World governments bounced back and forth between wanting to welcome the visitors with open arms to wanting to call all their armies together for self defense.

And the science fiction fans were all a flutter.

The main ship was in a geosynchronous orbit over Washington DC and was so massive it could be clearly seen even during high noon. It took a few days for the first actual communication to be received, apparently because their visitors had to dumb down their own technology to work with Earth's. That and they needed to figure out the language.

When it did come, they announced themselves as the First Order, and claimed they had come to seek a trade partnership with the people of Earth. An exchange of knowledge and technology for resources.

And the world's governments gave a sigh of relief, though they remained cautious. What followed were weeks of classified negotiations, carefully reported to and monitored by the UN. Everything had to be agreed upon before they could even consider a public appearance. The world was in such fervor as it was, with riots fueled by fear breaking out globally, that they needed to try and calm things down.

Finally an arrangement was made. A formal event to officially welcome the First Order and bring their representatives planet side so that the leaders of the world could meet with them and get further details as to what resources were wanted. It was promised to be a grand affair with only the elite invited. And, of course, being the 21st century, the elite included some of the famous.

That was how pop princess (pop tart?) Steffie Swann had managed to get invited. Her agent had somehow managed to get her an invite to the presentation. Security was insanely tight, even more so than for the president. The First Order had even helped to implement some kind of jamming technology that rendered cell phones and cameras useless unless it was a pre-approved camera, which were only allowed by news networks. No live streaming. No Twitter. No Face Time.

She was bored out of her skull and ignored the few glares sent her way as she popped her bubblegum again. Loudly. It was watermelon, too. She was just biding her time until the actual event got started, not really caring about the militaristic unloading of the First Order's representatives and their guards. The armor was cool, though. They all wore white and black, and only the officers were left visible.

She was about to tune out again as a pale, thing man with red hair moved to the podium to give a speech when another figure caught her eye. An even taller, imposing figure dressed all in black, including a black hood, stepped up to the stage at the end of the row of First Order officers. His face was covered by a black and silver mask, though that didn't stop him from giving off a cold, menacing vibe.

She'd felt that same vibe recently, when looking at a sketch done by one of the few people she considered an actual friend.

Steffie grabbed her cell phone and brought it up. No signal. Completely blocked!

The young woman sighed.

She really needed to call Rey.

* * *

Fifteen years ago workers at Disney Land had come across a small, stubborn and willful child who had somehow managed to get into the tunnels that ran under the park and allowed the cast to keep the magic going and helped prevent the patrons from seeing any of the drudge work. Once they had managed to secure her and calmed her down enough to figure out anything about her, they'd been shocked to learn she had been hiding in the park for nearly three weeks.

Further research uncovered a trail that led back to a junk yard where a rather unctuous fellow by the name of Unkar Plutt had been using her and several other half-feral orphans to scavenge thru old cars and junk for anything he could sell. Once the cops had gotten their hands on the man they'd found that the four kids he currently used were all 'bought' from parents who were too addicted or too greedy to give a damn about their offspring. He'd been looking for the girl for a little over a month after she'd managed to get away.

Her name was Rey.

No, he didn't know her last name, nor did he have any clear idea of her real age.

He didn't remember her mother's name or how to reach her.

A records search failed to match her footprints with anything on file, and with the press the story generated, that had been a nationwide search. It was determined she was likely born outside of a hospital and never officially registered. Medical exams estimated her to be about five years old, though having been on the cusp of starvation for who knew how long, they couldn't be sure.

The story, however, blew up. Though there were four kids in total, Rey was the first face the country saw and Rey became the face of the entire debacle. How could Disney have failed to notice the starving, wild orphan living in their own park?! It was shameful!

So Disney had stepped up. With their pull and popularity, they managed to get her declared a legal ward of the company and took over all her needs. After some consideration, they decided not to go all the way and call her 'Rey Disney' and kept her as 'Rey Doe', the name most of the public already knew her by.

And it didn't hurt that she was damn cute.

Rey's life went from starvation, slavery and neglect to plenty to eat, tutors to bring her up to speed with her education, therapy to help her deal with her trauma and lessons.

Lots and lots of lessons.

Music lessons. Voice lessons. Acting lessons. Art lessons. Dance lessons.

The only way that her new guardians could have gotten a better lump of clay from which to mold a Disney Princess would have been if they had gotten her the day she was born. She was placed as a Mousketeer when she was six and starred in her first Disney show when she was eight, a family friendly sit-com called "Brian's Rules" where she was cast as the younger, smarter sister to the main character. Once she got out of her awkward phase, which thankfully lasted less than a year, her character 'graduated' to her own show. It was a pro-girl show called "Rules by Rey" where she was the smart girl trying to balance her parents' expectations for her to be a straight-A student and get into an ivy league college with her own dreams of being a singing star.

The usual plan of action for a typical Disney Darling. The role dovetailed into an actual singing career with albums and concerts. Her face was everywhere and she couldn't walk down the street without people recognizing her. Every moment of her day was scrutinized and she couldn't so much as sneeze without it ending up on Facebook or something else. And she earned the House of Mouse far more money in revenue than they ever had to dole out on her.

She wasn't bitter about it. In fact, she was grateful for the life she had. Though there were a lot of people who believed she was being used by Disney for public relations and her earning potential, the laws put into place to protect child stars after the sins of the past ensured that she had a healthy trust fund and the house she now owned in the Arizona desert was paid for in full.

Her days as Disney's poster girl were pretty much over, now that she was (legally) twenty. She wasn't quite cut loose, since their lawyers were the executors of her trust until next year, but she was too well known for people to ignore her playing a teenager when the whole world knew she wasn't. There was an unofficial request that she not go quite as off the rails as some of her fellow Disney kids, such as Miley, Christina, Brittany and, her own compatriot, Steffie. Fortunately for Disney, carefully orchestrated sluttiness was not in her nature.

The Disney executives no longer dictated what kind of music she would record and play, so the sweet country and light pop tunes that had brought her into the limelight were now replaced with more somber, edgier tracks. She was more inclined towards an alternative bent than the happy, upbeat stuff she had grown up singing. She had notebooks full of it. Hundreds of songs she had written and composed while growing up, waiting for the day she could set her own rules. She preferred piano and guitar to synthesizers and turn tables. She preferred heart breaking, soulful lyrics to vaguely worded innuendo. It wasn't easy for her, because few took her seriously in this genre, but she was gaining ground.

Her agent blamed her imaginary friend. At least that's what he called him. And, in truth, Rey had to agree. Ever since the tutors put a sketch pencil in her hand, she had only cared about one thing in her drawing. A boy. Well, more like a young man, maybe a teenager in the beginning? He had dark eyes and darker hair that framed a face that was a bit too long with a prominent nose. She knew his face as well as he knew his name, 'Ben Solo', and she saw him in her dreams every night. Sometimes he was crying, lonely like she had been, both of them surrounded by people who cared for them, but not by anyone who really saw or understood them. Sometimes he was angry. So very angry. Her therapist theorized that he was a coping mechanism, or perhaps her mind's way of creating a 'guardian angel'. Or just a counterpart to share her pain.

Over the years he changed. Several years ago even his name changed, from 'Ben Solo' to 'Kylo Ren'. Now he was angry nearly all the time. Her dreams were more like nightmares, filled with violence and blood. And still she couldn't quit drawing him. She even painted him. Every tearful, impassioned love song she wrote was about him. He was her inspiration, even if he wasn't real.

He was real to her.

She tilted her head to one side as she cleaned her brushes, her eyes more on the canvas before her than her task. She had just finished it, a dual sided work with the masked version of Kylo looking towards the left and the unmasked version of him facing towards the right. Getting the silver of the mask to come out just right had been challenging, but not as much as the soulful expression of the face. With the mask he could be cold and ruthless. Without it, his face hid nothing.

Her cell phone buzzed on the table by the door to her art room. She sighed and stepped away from the canvas, setting her brushes down on a cloth to dry before looking at the screen. Why was Steffie calling her? Wasn't she supposed to be attending that alien diplomat thingy going down in DC?

She accepted the call and held it to her ear. "I thought you'd be elbow deep in senators and sycophants by now."

"Rey! Drop everything and get you ass to DC! Now!"

"What? What are you going on about? And no one's getting to DC right now. They have all roads and air traffic locked down."

"Find a way! You need to get here! NOW!"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Sometimes Steffie got a bit worked up. "I'm sure whatever it is you are more than capable of handling it. Mitch wouldn't have gotten you that invite if he thought you couldn't handle it."

"You don't understand, Rey! He's real!"

"Who's real?"

"Your mystery hottie! Rey! I just saw the _real_ Kylo Ren!"


	2. Chapter 2

The real Kylo Ren.

Rey was searching thru clips of videos captured from live broadcasts by various people on the web and posted to Youtube.

She had her laptop running thru her TV so she didn't miss a thing.

 _Even the name, Rey! They introduced him as 'Commander Kylo Ren', then something about knights or some such._

Master of the Knights of Ren. She'd never told Steffie that part.

She hadn't gotten much more out of her only true friend. She'd heard someone else come into the room, angry and biting. No surprise there. The people attending the event were supposed to be under complete medial lockdown except for pre-authorized news crews. Something that the Americans had bristled over given their staunch belief in the First Amendment. Steffie had somehow managed to get her hands on an outside line, apparently without approval. She hoped that didn't come back to bite the other girl in the ass.

Rey punched a key to pause a video. A shot of the gathering formation of First Order personnel. They were pulling out all the stops to make an impression. Rank after rank of soldiers in white armor that covered even their faces. Officers with crisp uniforms. And between the two, wearing all black with a black cowl and a familiar black and silver mask; Kylo Ren.

Rey swallowed hard, trying to will her heartbeat to slow down.

He was real.

Holy fuck, he was real.

Her head started spinning. She let her laptop slid to the floor as she leaned forward and put her head between her knees.

This wasn't happening.

This could _not_ be happening.

 _Rey! Run, Rey! Get out of there!_

Words she'd heard so long ago when she had been starving, crying and her body hurting from the vicious kicks to her ribs Plutt had delivered.

 _You have to get away from him! He'll kill you!_

He'd still been Ben, then. A teenage boy, so much stronger and taller than she. A presence in her mind when asleep, but that day she had seen him while she was awake. And he'd given her the push she'd needed to run away, eventually finding her way into the theme park and hiding out in what was supposed to be the Happiest Place on Earth. And for her it had seemed so. Even the food thrown out was far better than whatever scraps Plutt had bothered to feed them when he felt they had 'earned their keep'.

"He isn't real. He's not real."

Rey looked back up at the frozen picture displayed in glorious high definition. The same figure she had been drawing and painting for years. Caught on camera for the entire world to see.

Years of therapy and people telling her he was just a coping mechanism. A way for her to deal with the horrors of her younger life. A way to fight the loneliness. She was never supposed to actually _see_ him.

 _I suppose that technically I haven't._

It might still be just a coincidence. If she could see him without the mask. See his face. See if it was the face of her Kylo Ren.

From somewhere towards the front of her house she heard Drew's loud, cheerful voice. "Rey! Sweetheart, I brought food! Tamales from that little roach coach you like! And have I got some goodies for you! You're a Whedon fan, right?"

She was running searches for a shot of the man without his mask when her agent came into the room. "You going deaf?" The scent of tamales wafted her way along with the footsteps. "Watching the news. You're getting positively grown up."

She felt more than heard the shift in Drew's bearing when he caught sight of the screen.

"Turn that off, Rey."

She knew that tone. Drew had been hired on as her agent once Disney had decided to turn her into an asset. He'd been a combination of business manager and guardian for the past fifteen years. And though he had no children of his own, he had perfected a very convincing 'Dad' voice.

"Steffie called and told me. He even has the right name."

"Rey, it's a coincidence. Nothing more. Turn that feed off."

She hesitated. There was a spark of something… desperation, perhaps? It was blooming inside of her. "What if it isn't?'

"Rey."

"What if it isn't coincidence, Drew? What if there is a reason I've always seen him?"

"Rey, you can't believe that you have some psychic connection to an alien."

"Can't I?" She looked up from her seat on the white leather sofa, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. "Why not? How many things would make so much more sense?"

Drew's expression grew pained. "Rey, Sweetheart, you need to step away from this cliff. It's a coincidence, nothing more. If there is life on other planets, which there apparently is, then the chance that someone out there looks like your imaginary friend only increases. Just like the chances of there being someone who looks exactly like you. Let's turn off the laptop and take a breath. You're not having visions of an extra terrestrial. You're not psychic."

She surged up from her seat on the sofa, the laptop falling to the floor again. "I'M NOT EXACTLY NORMAL!"

As if to illustrate her words, the entire room began to shake. The laptop and television both fizzled out in a violent shower of sparks. She felt the urge to lash out. To strike out at some unperceived threat.

Drew paled, but stood his ground. "Rey! Control yourself!"

She snapped her eyes shut, drawing in deep, shuddering breaths. She searched for her island, the 'Happy Place' in her mind that helped her find her center.

This was why she'd chosen to buy an estate in the Arizona desert. Someplace apart from others. She was dangerous. The Incident had taught her that.

 _Screaming. Terror. A man begging for his life._

Her stomach roiled, threatening to turn against her and she hugged herself with a sob.

Drew stepped forward. "You're safe. Everything's fine. We're going to go into the kitchen and pig out on tamales and go over some offers I've gotten for you. You heard me say Whedon, right? I've got four potential film deals for you, but his comes without a reading. He already knows you can do the job. The part is yours if you want it."

She let her agent coax her to the kitchen, forcing herself to put the idea of Kylo Ren out of her head.

It was probably just a coincidence anyway.

* * *

Ren could feel Hux's gaze on him in the lift. Usually he could ignore it, but this time it was annoyingly pressing.

"So… you know this girl?"

"Only in Force visions."

Two of which had been spectacularly strong. Usually he had only seen her in dreams, something about the unconscious mind having an easier time of navigating the distance most likely. But twice he had seen her while awake.

The second time he had been about fifteen. He'd been training with his Uncle Luke at the time. Luke had known about the dream visions, the first one was part of the reason his mother had sent him away to train, but the second one had happened while he had been practicing his saber forms.

 _She hadn't found enough that was useful. At least, that's what the rotund man had thought. He'd cuffed her hard against the side of her head, sending her sprawling to the ground before kicking her three times in her torso. She'd felt something crack._

 _And Ben had been powerless to stop him. He hadn't really been there, so his hands couldn't grab the man nor could they grab Rey and pull her away. He must have looked strange, his fists failing at nothing. He'd only dimly heard his uncle's voice urging him to come back to himself._

 _So he'd urged her to run. To get away from the man who seemed intent on working her to death. If she could just get away from him, she might find safety elsewhere._

The first vision that had been so clear, the one that had brought them to Luke's attention, had been the one of Rey being born in some filthy hovel to a squalling girl who had looked so stupid she probably hadn't even realized how she'd conceived in the first place.

"We need to be cautious about how we extract her. Not that this planet has much in the way of military defenses that can actually stop us from just taking what we need, but the Supreme Leader stressed using diplomacy."

Ren bristled under the reminder. "He also stated that I need to secure her."

"Well, certainly. If one is to believe in your Force visions, at the very least the girl is a potential security risk."

Hux could be an annoying bastard at times.

Ren hadn't paid much attention to the annoying little socialite who had breached security to find a way to communicate outside of the accepted protocols until it had been brought to his attention exactly why she had done so.

Shortly after that he'd been given a full file on Rey Doe, the Earth native who he had been seeing in his mind for the equivalent of twenty standard Earth years.

Snoke had known about her, of course. And he, like his uncle, had believed the dreams to be artifacts of the Force. Somehow he and this girl were connected. Two beings bound thru the Force without ever having actually met.

Even his master agreed this was something too rare and precious not to explore.

"The officials of her country are not entirely comfortable with us going with them to question her."

Ren clenched his hands behind his back. "Then we impress upon them the spirit of cooperation. We do not have long before the Finalizer comes to relieve us."

That was something else the Supreme Leader had mentioned. There was concern that his mother might be getting closer to finding the location of Luke Skywalker. He was being called back into the main portion of the galaxy and away from this one spiral arm with a lone inhabited planet still quite a ways form being able to travel outside of their own star system. The officers of the Finalizer would finish their work here, lulling the population into a sense of loyalty and alliance, resulting in them being willing to start harvesting the vast resources of their portion of the galaxy in trade with the First Order. There were already over seven billion people on this little planet, after all. Once they could colonize other worlds they would only increase in numbers.

How strange that Rey would be here. On this insignificant, backwards planet.

The lift opened and Ren walked out. Hux would not be going with him, he had other duties to attend, but he would be taking Phasma. For this mostly diplomatic mission she had been ordered to forgo her usual armor and don an officer's uniform instead. Most of her men had been ignorant of the statuesque beauty that was their leader and she was none too pleased at being outed.

It was somewhat amusing.

She now stood by his shuttle with a cadre of four troopers, a Colonel Matthews from Rey's host's country's 'Air Force', an Agent Tillman from the same country's investigative body and the annoying Miss Swann and her manager. This was the party that would accompany him to the desert home of one Rey Doe.

Thankfully the trip would be relatively short. He didn't think he could bear their company too long.

Phasma had been quiet since the revelation that he was not unfamiliar with the face of the young woman who somehow had been drawing him for most of her life. She'd learned long ago not to question such things. The Supreme Leader was a Force user, the same as Ren and his knights. And she had seen what Ren could do in the field. She wasn't foolish enough to test him.

The starlets, however, was getting on his last nerve. Though she did have a useful observation as they came to land before the house in the midst of an ocean of sand.

"Lose the mask. She already knows what you look like."

With that, Miss Swann exited the shuttle, heedless of her agent's urgent pleas for her to 'slow the fuck down' and made her way to the door. She didn't even bother to knock. When the latch proved to be locked, she turned to the potted topiary next to it, grabbed the undersized tree with one hand, tilted the entire thing forward and pulled a key free from where it had been taped underneath. That done, she used the key to open the door and let herself in.

They followed.

"Rey! Rey Bae! I brought you a present!"

Really, he deserved a medal for not killing the girl by now.

A man came out of a side room, perhaps middle aged, with one of those crude communications devices in his hand. He frowned at Swann, and then caught sight of Ren, his face going pale.

"What is he doing here?"

Swann beamed. "I found him in DC. Brought him over to introduce him to Rey. Andrew Musk, meet the one and only Kylo Ren."

Musk turned from pale to purple in an impressively short amount of time. "You brought him here? Are you trying to push her over the edge!?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "Unclench. I'm not about to keep this from her."

The man shot a look at Swann's agent. "I told you that you needed to get this bitch on a leash."

Steffie snarled, "Eat me!" moved to punch the other man, only to be stopped by her agent. Ren ignored them and walked past them. There was music floating thru the hallway, but something else pulled him more.

He followed the pull, trusting Phasma to keep the others away, until he found himself moving down a secluded staircase into what looked like some sort of exercise room. One wall was nothing but mirrors with a wooden barre attached. A slender woman stood there, one foot on the bar, her leg extended as she bent gracefully at the waist, flexible enough to extend the opposite arm up and over her head and reach it to her ankle. There was strength and elegance in the lines of her body as she stretched, clearly cooling down after a thorough workout given the sweat that dampened her clothes.

He knew the precise moment when she spied him. Hazel eyes met his in the reflection and widened in recognition. He watched as she slowly straightened, her eyes never leaving his except for the brief moment it took for her to turn away from the mirror once both feet were on the ground.

Ren's eyes drank her in. He knew the face well, had seen it in his mind for so long, but now that she was real in flesh as well as spirit he could only feel that his dream image of her paled in comparison.

She stepped towards him, one smooth step after another. She seemed afraid to even blink.

He could sympathize.

He hadn't realized he'd pulled off his gloves until she was standing just before him, looking up into his face and he lifted one hand up to cup her face. Her skin was silk smooth and warm under his touch.

He heard the man, Andrew, coming down the stairs, loud and angry.

Ren gestured with his other hand towards the door, slamming it shut with an effort of will as he lowered his lips to capture her own in a heated, possessive kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

He was real.

Kylo Ren was real and he was kissing her.

This was nothing like the scripted kisses she'd had with various co-stars in this project or another, where they were on a set and too bright lights shining on them and a director telling them when it was time to stop. Those had been business and one of her hardest things to accomplish since she'd never really felt anything about them but had to make them believable.

This kiss was so different. She felt like it created an electric current that went from his tongue to hers and spread out from there into every nerve of her body. He tasted better than the finest chocolates. Better than that first Dr. Pepper of the day, where it is sweet and lightly burns at the same time, powering away the sleep from your mouth and throat.

How had she ever doubted that he was real?

Large, heated hands ran up her spine, pressing her gently to him as he deepened the kiss. She shivered and complied, rewarded with a deep moan that rumbled in his chest. Already she felt hungry and needy and like she was wearing too many clothes, and they hadn't even said an actual word to one another.

That helped to bring her to her senses.

It hurt, physically hurt to turn her head and break away from the kiss. "Stop." She tried to catch her breath, a futile effort it would seem. "We need to stop. Need to slow down." Yeah, she sounded really convincing with her forehead pressed against his jaw line because she didn't want to be parted from him.

She could feel, actually _feel_ his irritation at her request, but he granted it. He loosened his hold on her to allow a few inches of space between them. She stepped back and out of his arms slowly, her right hand the last thing to let go.

Rey took a couple of slow, calming breaths, aware of the weight of his eyes on her face.

"So, you exist. You're not just in my head."

She was keeping her eyes on a spot beneath his chin, not trusting her resolve if she met his eyes again. But she was fairly certain he smirked at that. "No, I'm not just a construct of your imagination. No more than you are of mine."

"Why would I be your imagination?"

She saw him tilt his head slightly from the edges of her vision. "Did you think only you had the visions? Do you not remember the night I urged you to get and run with that man nearly killed you?"

 _Rey! Run, Rey! Get out of there!_

"They told me that I made you up. A way to cope with everything that was happening to me. Someone bigger and stronger to protect me, or at least who could do the thinking for me so I could protect myself."

He snorted. It was an oddly elegant sound coming from him. "You need no one to protect you. You only need training to know how to use that with which you've been gifted."

She frowned, finally looking up at him. "What?"

He arched one dark brow and flicked a hand negligently to the side. One of the chairs by the wall slid over the matted floor to stop just at her knees.

Rey blinked. That really just happened.

A spot of hope flickered to life in her chest.

She looked back up at him, a question in her eyes.

He looked back at her, curious and confused. "You've been trying to suppress it. To hold it down and pretend it isn't there. But you have used it, if only on instinct. I've seen that. The man who tried to force yo…"

"I can't talk about that!" The words came out by wrote, sharp. She winced. "Sorry, but I can't. There's an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. No one can talk about that. It was part of the settlement to his family."

Kylo frowned. "A settlement to the family of the man who tried to rape you when you weren't even ten standard years." She could hear in his voice that he disapproved of the idea. "They were paid because _you_ defended yourself."

She dropped her gaze and shrugged. "Normal people don't…do things like that. It's sci-fi, not real life."

She felt his frustration and saw a second chair come gliding over the floor. This one was his.

"Very well. You wanted to talk. And we apparently have a lot to talk about."

* * *

The dwelling was comfortable. Primitive by their technological standards, but spacious, inviting and well appointed. Once she had convinced both Andrew Musk and the representatives from their current host country to leave Ren and the Earth girl be for now, Musk had grudgingly given her a tour of the rest of the house.

There were too many holes in her security.

The house was too far from the nearest town for quick medical attention given their current level of tech for transportation. A helicopter, a type of air based conveyance, was the fastest mode in the case of an emergency and Lady Rey apparently subscribed to a service that ensured any costs for such a service were covered in full if needed.

It was also too remote for her to be on the local utilities. Her power came from a combination of solar panels and wind turbines, and as a backup there was a buried tank where flammable gas was held to be used for the hot water heater and the cook stove in the kitchen. That was a risk of explosion. Also, her water was delivered by tankard once a month and pumped into two private cisterns, one dedicated to hygiene and drinking while the other was almost solely for the indoor swimming pool and matching heated water spa. It would be too easy for someone to poison her water supply.

They had paid to run the highest capacity data lines to her, because apparently satellite based data wasn't currently reliable enough, to allow her unfettered access to the planet's version of a holonet, but otherwise she was secluded.

For someone who spent her young life in the public eye and who was considered quite popular and easily recognizable by the population of her world, Rey Doe had made a concerted effort to isolate herself as much as she could once she reached legal adulthood. Almost as though she were hiding something or from something.

Or perhaps she was simply fed up with people always staring. The level of devotion these people gave to their celebrities was off putting and more than a bit mystifying to Phasma. She could understand it if they worshiped great generals or political leaders, but they seemed infatuated with actors and musicians instead.

Currently Captain Phasma stood at a window (not even resistant to the high impact projectile weapons used on this planet!) looking at the four mobile shelters that had been brought in from the nearest military facility, along with a squadron of twelve soldiers to her four. Not that their 'guns' would be any match for her troopers with their blasters. The show of might attempted by the Earthers was… cute.

A perimeter had been pushed out one mile from the house and supplies brought in as it was unlikely that Lady Rey would be prepared or stocked for so many additional guests. Currently a pair of cooks was making use of the kitchen to prepare the morning meal for all parties involved. There had yet been any sight of Ren or the girl save for a brief moment in the night when they had emerged from the basement studio only long enough to claim some bottles of water and so that the girl could apparently avail herself of the 'fresher. They had apparently interrupted her physical training session and she wanted to wash off the salt and sweat. Phasma had been the only one to see them that late into the night and had understood by Ren's single nod to leave them be. They had retreated to what had proven to be the girl's art room for further… well… whatever they were doing.

She hoped that Lord Ren at least knew enough about women not to press the physical side of the relationship quite this soon.

She saw Musk by the window's reflection, coming into the room from the back hall where the guest rooms were found. There were four, taken by her, Musk, Miss Swann and her agent. Colonel Matthews and Agent Tillman were sharing one of the mobile units with her four soldiers and the Earthers using the others.

Andrew Musk looked like he hadn't slept all that well. "Rough night?"

"I don't understand why you're jamming all signals. This is serious. I need to bring in the legal team on this."

Phasma arched one golden brow and turned to face the man. "This is a private matter between Commander Ren and Miss Doe." 'Miss' was the correct title for the girl here on her home world. And their intelligence told them that, by and large, these Americans were not entirely trusting of noble titles outside of history and fiction. "As I explained last night, these visions are not one sided. He has been as haunted by them as she."

"What do you expect is going to happen here?"

She expected that they would be leaving Earth with Lady Rey in tow and, hopefully, getting laid on a regular basis may cut back on Ren's more destructive tendencies. "That is for the pair of them to decide. It is not our place to decide for them. I do believe that she is concerned of legal age in this country, is she not?"

"She's twenty, that doesn't mean she's an adult. This life can still chew her up and spit her out."

Phasma studied the man closely. "How did you come to be in her life, exactly?"

"Oddly enough, I was hired by her guardian ad litem." When it was clear that Phasma didn't know what that was, he added, "It's an attorney appointed by the courts to look out for the well being of a minor who has no other responsible guardians but needs legal protection. When Disney indicated they wanted to bring her into show business as well as see to her care, it was determined she would need an agent and business manager who wasn't on their payroll. A lot of people wanted the job, but I somehow managed to convince them that I really gave a damn about what happened to her."

"Because you do. I could tell that when we arrived."

"I've been that girl's manager since she was six. I'm the closest thing to an actual parent she has, and I'm not comfortable with the fact that she's been shut up alone with a man she just met yesterday for the entire night."

"I wouldn't expect any decent father figure to be. However, at some point you do need to let her make her own decisions. That's part of being a father to begin with. Eventually the child grows up."

A door opened from deeper in the house followed by two voices; one male and one female. Musk kept himself from charging in that direction. Instead they listened as the pair took another route that lead them to the kitchen were more voices joined in. A moment later Rey came into the central room with a confused frown between her eyes.

"Why are there two strange men in my kitchen making breakfast?"

Phasma turned to face the girl fully. "They are with your military and were sent with supplies when it was thought unlikely you would be prepared for so much unexpected company."

She blinked. "Oh. Probably wise."

She looked younger than twenty. Young and mostly unscathed by the harshness of her earlier life. "I'm Captain Phasma of the First Order."

The woman offered a genuine but tired smile. "Rey Doe. It's lovely to meet you."

Musk was less polite. "You look like hell, kid. Did you get any sleep at all?"

She turned to her manager. "Uhm…no, actually. We were talking. There was a lot to cover." Rey flexed her shoulders somewhat. "Kylo says he can help me with…" She drifted off, giving a curious look Phasma's way as though not sure how much to reveal.

"With what?"

"With the abilities you've been urging her to suppress all this time." Ren's voice was deep and clearly disapproving as he came into the room, taking up a place next to Rey. The girl was not short, maybe on the lower side for tall when considering the average woman, but next to Ren most people looked diminutive. She was an exception, even in the First Order.

Whatever Ren meant, however, made the Earther pale.

"What do you mean?"

"You know precisely what I mean. I'm still having trouble understanding why it was felt that the family of the man who tried to force himself on a child should be compensated financially for that same child defending herself."

Musk's eyes shot to Rey. She shook her head. "I didn't talk about it. He already knew."

"He knew?"

Phasma noticed that Ren took a step that put him in front of Rey, half blocking her from the manager's sight. "I saw what happened, just as she has seen many of the more difficult times in my life. I saw that he tried to do. But she is the one who suffers for it by being told to suppress what she is and what she can do? As though she's some kind of freak?"

Musk's shoulders squared. Phasma tensed slightly in case she needed to intervene. "That man was slime, but now he's in a persistent vegetative state. All he can do is sit in a wheelchair and drool. We needed to keep the family quiet because if it had gotten out…" He dropped off, his eyes shooting to towards the wall that blocked them form the kitchen and then to the window where the mobile units were visible.

His voice lowered to a whisper. "If it had gotten out, Rey wouldn't have just been hit with a shit storm in the press, she would have been disappeared. Maybe that sort of thing is common out in space, but it doesn't happen here. An accident would have been arranged to make it look like she died or vanished without a trace while she would have been shuffled away to some government black site where they would have turned her into a damn lab rat! Poked and prodded on while they tried to figure out what makes her tick and how they could use it to their advantage. I did it to keep her safe!"

Well, that certainly explained some things. And, apparently, the girl was a Force user. The Supreme Leader would likely be thrilled with this development.

Ren studied the man in silence, as though trying to decide if he wanted to kill him or not. Finally, he did speak again. "You made the wrong choice. Now she's terrified of herself, so much so that she makes her home in the middle of a desert where she can't possibly hurt anyone by accident. But this is understandable. Your world does not know about the Force or its use, likely because it's never bothered to realize it's there. But Rey is a Force user, and dangerous as she is now. She needs a teacher, and I appear to be the only one qualified."

Musk looked about to protest but the front door opened and the men from the local government arrived. As though sensing potential danger to his client, the man shut up and they made their way into the kitchen for the morning meal.

It was after they were done and Rey had excused herself to get some much needed sleep that the man looked to Ren again. "So… you've been having them, too. The dreams."

"It is a personal thing, but yes."

"I don't suppose you took up art as well? Any chance you've been drawing her the same way she's been with you?"

Phasma hid an amused smile behind her mug of coffee.

"No. My training didn't allow time for such things."

Musk sighed. "Pity, that would seal the deal even better."

"What deal."

"Well, if we're going to explain how Rey suddenly starts spending so much time with one of the extra terrestrials visiting the planet, we're going to need to give the public a good reason." He took a drink of his own coffee, his expression contemplative.

"We're going to need to publish her portfolio."


End file.
